Support to Media in Electoral Processes

Workshop report and conclusions

Report on the joint conference convened by International IDEA and the BBC World Service Trust 18-19 March 2010, London

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

Executive Summary 3

Context and introduction 4

Objectives 4

Assessment of the current state of support to media around elections 5

Key issues

Integrating support and analysis to media with the electoral cycle approach 6

Coordination of donors, media support, and electoral assistance organisations 9

New technologies 10

Regulating to support fairness and minimisation of violence 10

Violence and incitement 11

Summary of conference conclusions and recommendations 12

Boxes:

I. Media and the electoral cycle approach 8

Annexes:

Annex I. List of participants 14

Annex II. Participants’ evaluations 15

Annex III. Further reading and relevant resources 16

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The meeting, held in March in London, was widely considered to be the first of its kind and was addressing an issue of increasingly urgent concern to the international electoral support community.

International IDEA and the BBC World Service Trust brought together key donors, electoral and democracy support organisations, international organisations and media support organisations to consider how support to media around elections can be improved.

Its principal conclusions are:

• The quality, character and behaviour of media have always influenced electoral conduct and outcomes. Their role is seen as growing both for good and ill. The potential for media to be co-opted by sometimes extreme political, ethnic, religious or other forces in society appears to be increasing. Examples of media fuelling or fostering violence around elections – most notably around the Kenya 2007 elections – are perceived to be rising.

• Electoral support organisations have placed a relatively low priority on support to media over recent years. Media support interventions tend to be conceived and implemented late in the electoral cycle and systematic approaches to understanding and supporting the role of media around elections are rare. Support to media around elections is widely perceived as being ad

• Mechanisms to map the implications of rapid media and communication changes for electoral outcomes are sparse and primitive. Diagnostic systems that can assess whether electoral or media support strategies are sufficient to minimise the risk of media being captured or co-opted to foster violence, or to maximise their role in informing public debate and reinforcing scrutiny and accountability of electoral and democratic processes are insufficiently developed.

• Mechanisms for lesson learning of which media support strategies have proved most effective (or ineffective) in different electoral and democratic contexts are very limited. Coordination of media support around elections could also be improved.

• The workshop identified a nascent community of practice of electoral support and media support organisations, as well as donors who support them, who uniformly saw a common purpose in being better networked, more mutually informed and more strategically coherent. There was substantial interest in further developing and crystallising this community of practice.

• The ‘electoral cycle approach’ constitutes a critical tool through which many of these concerns could be organised. The workshop made some initial progress in populating the electoral cycle approach with media relevant issues and potential interventions. Among the most crucial of these was a diagnostic analysis of the needs and roles of the media after an election in preparation for the next election, leaving a sufficient period to plan and address deep seated issues. Short term, ad hoc, hastily planned interventions have insufficient impact.

• A concrete recommendation was made that UN EAD might consider initiating a more formal process designed to address issues concerning the role of media in elections and to develop a set of agreed principles on support to media around elections.

• The proliferation of new media technologies means new approaches are required for training electoral management bodies (EMBs), journalists, and citizens.

• Approaches to media regulation need to focus on effectively sanctioning hate speech, establishing independent regulatory bodies and making self-regulatory initiatives work.

Greater cooperation and coordination of donors, media development and electoral assistance organisations would improve the quality of support and the sustainability of impact on democratic institutions.

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Context and introduction

The contribution media can – and often do – play around elections is universally acknowledged among electoral support and democracy organisations. An informed citizenry, a platform for inclusive public debate and civic dialogue, accountable government and independent, journalistic scrutiny of election conduct are all made possible by free, independent and plural media.

Over recent years, however, the costs to democracy and to electoral outcomes of media not playing these roles have become clearer. Organisations like the BBC World Service Trust and The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) have marked worrying trends towards media being prone to increasing capture and cooption by political, ethnic, religious or other forces in society, and an accompanying trend towards media characterised by polarisation, extremism and, at its worse, hate and the fostering of violence. The role of some local language and online media in the Kenya 2007/8 election process (as well as SMS telephony) in fuelling violence has been particularly well documented.

At the same time, burgeoning social media are providing fresh transparency and accountability mechanisms which can improve electoral conduct, character and outcomes, as well as more informed and vibrant public debate.

The BBC World Service Trust and International IDEA joined together to organise the workshop ‘Support to Media in Electoral Processes’ in London, 18-19 March 2010, which brought together leading actors in the fields of media support and electoral assistance. The objective of the workshop was to conduct a provisional assessment of current media support in electoral processes with the goal of drawing conclusions and making recommendations to enhance support to media in the context of the electoral cycle.

International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization with 25 member states, has been working on an effective electoral assistance agenda promoting a shift in policy and practice from event-driven to process-driven support throughout the electoral cycle. While the focus has been predominantly on electoral management bodies (EMBs) and other electoral organisations, International IDEA is now linking this effective support agenda to other key stakeholders, namely political parties, parliaments and the media.

The BBC World Service Trust runs a Policy and Research Programme on the Role of Media and Communication in Democratic Development, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The Programme aims to explore and clarify how the role of the media can be better understood and more appropriately positioned within governance and democracy strategies. The BBC World Service Trust is involved in support to media in many countries and is keen to see greater clarity and a more systematic approach to supporting the media throughout electoral processes.

This report aims to provide a concise assessment of the status of support to media within the electoral cycle approach as well as highlighting key issues and conclusions addressed throughout the workshop. Findings are grouped by issue, with specific recommendations provided by issue and overarching conclusions presented in closing. The report has been jointly authored by the BBC World Service Trust and International IDEA, with input from several workshop participants.

Objectives

The workshop aimed to examine the scope and effectiveness of international assistance to media during electoral processes and to consolidate information on current best practices and shortcomings in assistance. Despite formal acknowledgement of the importance of media in electoral processes, limited assistance is provided in this area as a subset of effective electoral assistance.

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Ultimately, the workshop aimed to inform the agenda for key future directions for media activities throughout the electoral cycle.

Overall Objectives:

• To provide an analysis of the quality and scope of current media assistance activities in order to inform the improvement of the electoral process;

• To identify gaps between the principles of effective electoral assistance and current practice in the field of media and democracy; and

• To develop strategic recommendations for future media assistance activities that take into account key lessons learned by donors, experts and practitioners in the field.

Assessment of the current state of support to media around elections

There was widespread acknowledgement that sometimes significant sums are spent on training journalists to cover elections, monitoring media coverage of elections, supporting media focused public debates and enabling journalists to scrutinise elections and other activities.

However, there was a near universal consensus that such support tended to be towards the bottom of all the priorities of election support organisations; it is nearly always planned and implemented very late and too close to the election itself; it was too rarely well coordinated; and it was rarely preceded by a clear needs assessment of what the media problem the support was designed to solve, and was too frequently formulaic. For example, training for journalists might be aimed at journalists from urban based, mainstream mass media when the greatest training need might be among rural local language radio talk show hosts.

There is very little (arguably no) staff capacity within the electoral or democracy support system which exists to capture learning of what works or does not work in media support strategies around elections or who can provide clear strategic guidance.

Nonexistent or inadequate diagnostic systems capable of determining whether media and communication trends – and the broader political forces that may be shaping them – constitute a risk of hate speech. For example, participants from Kenya were concerned that two years after the 2007/8 election violence, it was difficult to determine the existence of a clear and comprehensive media support strategy from electoral or democracy support organisations that might reduce the risk of media playing a similar, or even enhanced role, around the next elections.

Enhancing or supporting freedom of expression and media freedom, and better protecting journalists from intimidation or attack was considered critical to enabling media to play a constructive role in media and there was considerable alarm at the increasing assaults on media freedom, with hate speech often cited as a justification by governments to inflict new curbs on media. Discouraging governments from clamping down on media who they perceive as a threat to stability was more likely to be successful if clear, appropriate and systematic media support mechanisms were in place to reduce the risk of hate speech.

Where donors and democracy support actors did have established media development strategies and programmes, the strategic linkages to election support and management were considered too weak.

The workshop’s key findings were that current policies regarding media support during elections are characterised by a lack of strategy and coordination, a predominance of ad hoc and short-term support, and inadequate lesson learning across elections, organisations and countries. Realistically, support to media may never be a top priority for electoral support programmes and organisations – as one participant put it, given some of the extreme challenges faced by these

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programmes in transitional countries, support to media is considered the “icing on the cake” rather than a core or critical issue.

Not all of the discussion was focused on problems and weaknesses in current approaches. There were good examples of how media had been supported, and there was a strong sense that new opportunities were emerging – particularly through social media – that could provide fresh energy to attempts to ensure elections were more accountable, rooted in a more informed public debate and ultimately more likely to lead to a sustainable political settlement.

Despite the clear and possibly persistent limitation in terms of prioritising support and funds around electoral support programmes, there are significant opportunities for developing more strategic approaches and thereby enhancing programme effectiveness. These conclusions and recommendations are addressed in detail in the following section. Overall, they indicate a need for dialogue on good practice and a clear set of principles of what makes an effective support strategy around the role of media in elections. This has become more acute as the international community has moved towards a better coordinated electoral cycle approach over recent years.

Integrating support and analysis to media with the electoral cycle approach

In 2006 International IDEA helped to convene the Ottawa Conference on Effective Electoral Assistance, which brought together electoral stakeholders from donors, EMBs and a range of other organisations. It aimed to give participants an opportunity to share views and experiences and was framed as the start of an ongoing conversation on long-term electoral assistance. Key recommendations related to facing the electoral reality and developing longer-term, more sustainable models for building institutions and capacity rather than focusing support around electoral events. Participants viewed the Ottawa Conference as a first step requiring follow-up, specifying that political parties, media and civil society needed to be brought into the conversation as it developed.

As elaborated in the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network:

Elections are composed of a number of integrated building blocks, with different stakeholders interacting and influencing each other. Electoral components and stakeholders do not stand alone. They are interdependent, and therefore the breakdown of one aspect (for example the collapse of a particular system of voter registration) can negatively impact on every other.

While the media are one of these “integrated building blocks”, support to media in this context presents very specific and complex challenges that are not currently being met by the international development community. While it has always been acknowledged that media has the capacity to influence electoral conduct and outcomes, this shortfall is arguably becoming increasingly critical as the incidence of active media involvement in election violence appears to be on the rise.

Obstacles to provision of effective support to media throughout the electoral cycle include:

• Lack of coordination mechanisms: There is currently no focal point for these issues internationally, and often no person allocated to deal with these issues within coordinating bodies such as the EU and UN agencies. The workshop highlighted that though responsibility for media and democratic development (including elections) is clearly allocated within some donors and development actors, communication with their elections counterparts is generally not systematised.

• Focus on short term support: A focus on short-term support to media around elections, with limited preparation and follow-up – this continues to undermine potential for effectively building the media’s role as a critical transparency and accountability mechanism throughout the electoral cycle.

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• Conflicting expectations on roles: Varied and sometimes conflicting expectations of the media’s role during the election period, for example political parties’ preoccupation with dominating media space, to EMBs’ focus on utilisation of media as a voter education tool, to public expectations of the media acting as a critical watchdog and accountability mechanism;

• Media is not a high priority: More than one participant noted that in the context of strategic support to the electoral cycle, support to media is not a top priority and is sometimes considered the ‘icing on the cake’. At the same time, its importance was well understood the consequences of failed support recognised as potentially disastrous. While it may not be feasible to increase the priority of media support relative to other areas, it is critically important to mitigate some of the ramifications, as outlined above.

Despite clear obstacles, though, there are also opportunities for integrating support to media with the electoral cycle approach with a view to enhancing overall delivery of electoral support.

Electoral cycle recommendations:

• Wider and more integrated promotion and understanding of the electoral cycle approach not only within the electoral support community, but extending to media support donors and implementing agencies.

• Integration of specialist electoral training in long-term media programmes – not just on professional standards of reporting, but broadly on reporting political accountability and playing a socially responsible role in good governance (e.g. following legislators’ voting behaviour, attendance records, scrutiny of campaign promise delivery, scrutiny of campaign and party finance, voter and civic education – not just on voting, but voter registration, party and candidate registration etc.).

• Encourage EMBs to engage more effectively with the media sector – to find creative ways to work together to improve voters’ access to information, on civic education, reaching out to Internally Displaced People (IDPs), refugees and the marginalised.

• Better coordination of election day coverage and dissemination of results – EMBs can increase their transparency with the aid of the media and/or new technology.

• When results are disputed the media need to be prepared for the role they can play in scaling down fear and conflict rather than escalating tensions.

• Use the period after an election to assess needs while the election is fresh in everyone’s minds – use this analysis to inform assistance activities for the next electoral cycle.

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Box I. Media and the electoral cycle approach

The electoral cycle approach, developed by the EC and International IDEA, is used as a tool to make electoral assistance more sustained and more effective. It has been officially endorsed by UNDP and the EC for every common electoral assistance project. It has become a model for both planning and executing electoral assistance programmes, and has underpinned successful projects undertaken in Timor Leste, Togo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone (among others).

While aimed at supporting elections and particularly EMBs, this tool has clear applications for support to media around elections. One of the outputs of the Workshop on Support to Media in Electoral Processes was to integrate key media functions (routinely supported by development interventions) into the electoral cycle. The initial result – which requires more detailed development – is shown in the diagram above. This proved a useful exercise in contextualising media support within a broader electoral support framework, and clearly indicated the need for more sustained approaches to capacity-building, voter engagement and detailed planning as well as more commonly supported activities such as elections reporting training and stakeholder dialogue.

One of the key potentials identified during the workshop was the ability to leverage existing, long-term media support projects to properly prepare for, cover and follow-up on elections. During the electoral period media organisations are consumed with planning and execution – attempts at capacity-building during this stage are unlikely to have any impact but are still in demand from some donors. Several organisations reported they already take the approach of integrating political and elections reporting into longer term projects – this is a model that could usefully be supported and leveraged by electoral support organisations and donors.

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Coordination recommendations:

• Harness opportunities provided by other national and international forums for media development (e.g. Open Society Institute, the Global Forum for Media Development) and electoral assistance (e.g. EC-UNDP Joint Task Force).

• Produce a call for cooperation – an agreement to build global and local connections in electoral/media assistance, encouraging donors, media development and electoral assistance organisations to sign up.

• Needs assessment missions for specific countries should incorporate media support for electoral processes. Short guidelines could be provided to assessors.

• Survey donors to see what they are planning for upcoming elections in terms of media and electoral support; encourage national-level elector and media support linkages.

• Establish a dedicated online space to link the media and election communities – either through a new website or using existing sites. This space would be a fast link to online resources, information about media and election organisations, best practices, country pages, electoral calendars, online forum for discussions.

• The UN often coordinates electoral assistance activities on the ground where it is active and the UN Electoral Assistance Division (EAD) would be a logical leader in some cases for promoting media and election coordination. This might not always be appropriate and there are other options – it was agreed that participating organisations would take the initiative to contact others where they plan to be active, in order to ascertain what is already being done on the ground.

Coordination of donor, media support and electoral assistance organisations

As the first of its kind on this scale, the workshop itself was seen as a solid starting point for brining the two communities of practice together to share information and understandings of the challenges faced. The workshop effectively identified and convened a nascent community of practice of electoral support and media support organisations and donors who support their work. There was recognition of common goals to become better networked, more mutually informed and more strategically coherent. There was also substantial interest in developing this community while addressing limitations and potential obstacles head-on.

Contradictory notions of coordination – and possible resistance to coordination among both local and international bodies – led participants to loosely define the term in relation to the ultimate goal; Coordination, it was agreed, was less about working under a rigid operational framework, and more about information sharing and harmonisation of activities. The former proposal would be unlikely to gain any traction in practice, but the latter makes sense and has significant potential for stakeholder buy-in at multiple levels.

Just as more harmonised approaches to electoral assistance are yielding clear results, greater cooperation and coordination on media support as part of this process has the potential to significantly enhance electoral support programmes. One of the concrete recommendations of the workshop comprised investigation of an appropriate mechanism for coordination, most probably through the UN Electoral Assistance Division (EAD). Additionally, several intra-organisational initiatives aimed at practitioners were discussed in terms of potential adaptation and value across the areas of media support and electoral support.

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New technologies recommendations: • EMBs need to be ahead of the curve on new media, establishing themselves as sources of

reliable electoral information and becoming proactive – using new technology to monitor, respond and correct problems, and even pre-empt potential crises caused by inaccurate information.

• Citizen journalism means new kinds of journalism training are required: email, online support, perhaps via social networking sites.

• Codes of conduct for citizen journalists, targeting opinion leaders/bloggers specifically.

• Develop our understanding of and strategies to deal with the increasing fragmentation and polarisation of media as it becomes easier and cheaper to propagate uncontrolled and potentially inaccurate information.

• Use the internet and communications technologies (ICTs) to verify local results, and to engage citizens in monitoring and reporting media issues and potentially results.

New technologies

Proliferation of mobile phones, the internet and various new phenomena such as social networking are clearly having a significant impact on the conduct of elections. Nowhere has this impact been clearer than in the media; the term mass communications has taken on a new meaning, with one-to-many communication replaced by high frequency many-to-many communications. Several issues were highlighted, including:

• the growth in internet and mobile phone access especially in Africa and the diminishing urban/rural divide because of this;

• a movement towards news gathering by online sources and citizen journalists;

• a decrease in editorial filters, fewer professionals standing between citizens and information, greater consumer control over selection of information relevant to them – with attending risks of fewer checks and balances, harder to pick trustworthy sources of information;

• new opportunities for citizen engagement, public debate and scrutiny of electoral processes, but also the major challenge of monitoring new media content (how to pick up on critical issues given the difficulties of tracking all internet output).

Together, these challenges demand new (or at least adjusted) approaches for training EMBs, journalists and citizens. This is likely to remain an ongoing and evolving challenge for all stakeholders over the coming years, but was seen as particularly critical in the context of current efforts to better coordinate electoral and media support efforts.

Regulating to support fairness and minimise potential for violence

Media regulation is one area that has traditionally received substantial attention within electoral support programmes. The European Commission, UNDP and International IDEA (among others) have developed and implemented wide-ranging and sophisticated methodologies for assessing and developing regulation as well as media monitoring during election periods. Given that this issue resonates with both electoral and media support organisations – and given diverging views regarding the necessary extent of regulation – media monitoring was the subject of substantial interest and discussion throughout the workshop.

In particular, there was substantial discussion on the case of Kenya and the failure to anticipate the negative role played by the vernacular media in the violence that followed the 2007 presidential election. Several participants felt strongly that media had effective media monitoring systems been

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Regulation recommendations:

• EMBs need to be ahead of the curve on new media, establishing themselves as sources of reliable electoral information and becoming proactive – using new technology to monitor, respond and correct problems, and even pre-empt potential crises caused by inaccurate information.

• Citizen journalism means new kinds of journalism training are required: email, online support, perhaps via social networking sites.

• Codes of conduct for citizen journalists, targeting opinion leaders/bloggers specifically.

• Develop our understanding of and strategies to deal with the increasing fragmentation and polarisation of media as it becomes easier and cheaper to propagate uncontrolled and potentially inaccurate information.

• Use ICTs to verify local results, and to engage citizens in monitoring and reporting media issues and potentially results.

• Provide ICT training for the politically marginalised.

in place in Kenya in 2007, there would have been greater and earlier visibility of media attempts to foment violence, and therefore the ability to proactively deal with the situation. As stated elsewhere in this report, there is substantial concern around an apparent lack of strategy and procedures to avoid a repeat scenario around the next elections in Kenya in 2012.

An additional challenge facing established regulation methodologies – and exacerbating inevitable capacity gaps – is the proliferation of new media. Less regulated and inexpensive media such as websites are increasingly being used by political parties to convey highly biased information. There have been instances recorded of incitement to violence via mobile phones, as with the proliferation of web-based sources of information, the situation can only be expected to become more vast and complex in the future.

Realistically, new media proliferation poses an insurmountable challenge in the context of regulation as it has traditionally been conceived and managed. While regulations can and are already being adapted to deal with these shifts, expectations regarding what is and is not feasible to monitor and address are largely yet to be addressed.

Violence and incitement

Significant discussion on the role of the media in promoting electoral violence focused on the recent experience of the Kenya elections, and several Kenyan organisations were represented at the workshop. Substantial discussion cut across several of the key issues identified over the two days, but the role of various stakeholders in preventing and managing incitement to violence attracted particular interest.

A second key issue identified was around reporting results, which can be problematic in terms of methodology and carries significant risk for misinformation and incitement. Media, in particular, frequently report snapshots of voting trends from particular stations but their locations may be random, risking reporting bias. There is little doubt that skewing party, candidate and voter expectations can lead to trouble.

Media need to be equipped with the skills and knowledge to report on official results as they are announced (in addition to pre-announcement, unofficial results). Given that the results come in from stations at varying speeds, early announcements often fail to predict overall results, and there is a clear role for the media to play in terms of contextualising these to ensure a proper understanding of them. This is an area that should be included routinely in any media capacity-

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Violence and incitement recommendations:

• Develop comprehensive media support strategies well in advance of elections, including risks and mitigations.

• Ensure that comprehensive reviews and analysis are conducted following significant incidents of electoral violence, and that these are followed up in advance of subsequent elections.

• Ensure media are equipped with the skills and knowledge to report results responsibly and with reasonable degrees of accuracy.

• Support effective monitoring bodies and mechanisms.

building programme for media, as well as elections plans developed in cooperation with media organisations.

Media monitoring was considered an especially effective mechanism to reduce the risk of hate media and incitement, particularly when it was carried out by independent research organisations or civil society (as opposed to government entities).

Conclusions and recommendations

Principle and overarching conclusions of the workshop were:

• The quality, character and behaviour of media have always influenced electoral conduct and outcomes. Their role is seen as growing both for good and ill. The potential for media to be co-opted by sometimes extreme political, ethnic, religious or other forces in society appears to be increasing. Examples of media fuelling or fostering violence around elections – most notably around the Kenya 2007 elections – are perceived to be rising.

• Electoral support organisations have placed a relatively low priority on support to media over recent years. Media support interventions tend to be conceived and implemented late in the electoral cycle and systematic approaches to understanding and supporting the role of media around elections are rare. Support to media around elections is widely perceived as being ad hoc, poorly coordinated, unstrategic and insufficient.

• Mechanisms to map the implications of rapid media and communication changes for electoral outcomes are sparse and primitive. Diagnostic systems that can assess whether electoral or media support strategies are sufficient to minimise the risk of media being captured or co-opted to foster violence, or to maximise their role in informing public debate and reinforcing scrutiny and accountability of electoral and democratic processes are insufficiently developed.

• Mechanisms for lesson learning of which media support strategies have proved most effective (or ineffective) in different electoral and democratic contexts are very limited. Coordination of media support around elections could also be improved.

• The workshop identified a nascent community of practice of electoral support and media support organisations, as well as donors who support them, who uniformly saw a common purpose in being better networked, more mutually informed and more strategically coherent. There was substantial interest in further developing and crystallising this community of practice.

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• The electoral cycle approach constitutes a critical tool through which many of these concerns could be organised. The workshop made some initial progress in populating the electoral cycle approach with media relevant issues and potential interventions. Among the most crucial of these was a diagnostic analysis of the needs and roles of the media after an election in preparation for the next election, leaving a sufficient period to plan and address deep seated issues. Short term, ad hoc, hastily planned interventions have insufficient impact.

• A concrete recommendation was made that UN EAD might consider initiating a more formal process designed to address issues concerning the role of media in elections and to develop a set of agreed principles on support to media around elections.

• The proliferation of new media technologies means new approaches are required for training EMBs, journalists, and citizens.

• Approaches to media regulation need to focus on effectively sanctioning hate speech, establishing independent regulatory bodies and making self-regulatory initiatives work.

• Greater cooperation and coordination of donors, media development and electoral assistance organisations would improve the quality of support and the sustainability of impact on democratic institutions.

Finally, and in addition to identifying more general areas requiring further dialogue and examination, the workshop produced several specific recommendations:

• A concrete recommendation was made that UN EAD might consider initiating a more formal process designed to address issues concerning the role of media in elections and to develop a set of agreed principles on support to media around elections.

• Proposals that emanated from working groups around adapting and extending existing communities of practice should be taken forward by the relevant leads (as a first step, International IDEA on the ACE Network and the Communications Initiative on its own portal).

• Furthering dialogue and development in this area needs to be a higher priority. As a starting point, International IDEA and the BBC World Service Trust have agreed to further this work over the coming 12-24 months. Initiatives will be shared where possible with workshop participants, and through the ACE Network and CI portal.

At the conclusion of the workshop participants reflected on outcomes from their own perspective, and highlighted potential next steps within their own organisations. Participants are strongly encouraged to update the workshop organisers where these proposals are taken forward, which will assist in informing future collective actions.

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ANNEX I. LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

Name Organisation Position/area of expertise

Agnès Callamard Article 19 Executive Director

Arturo Sanchez Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) President

Barbara Smith Independent consultant

Beryl Aidi The Kenya Human Rights Commission Programme Officer, Media and Publicity

Caesar Handa Strategic PR & Research Limited CEO

David Thirlby Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD)

Programme Officer

Elizabeth Smith Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Secretary General

Emma Grant Department for International Development (DFID)

Social Development Adviser, Policy and Research Division

Finn Rasmussen International Media Support (IMS) Programme Officer

Gillian McCormack International IDEA NEEDS Project, elections observation, training, media

Gordana Jankovic Open Society Institute (OSI) Head of Media Support Programme

Gordon Adam Media Support Solutions Executive Director

Grace Favrel Electoral Reform International Services (ERIS)

Programme Officer, Africa and Middle East

Helena Bjuremalm Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)

Senior Officer/Policy Specialist

Holly Ruthrauff National Democratic Institute (NDI) Senior Program Officer for. Election and Political Processes

James Lenahan International IDEA Head of Communications

James Deane BBC World Service Trust Director of the Policy and Research Programme on the Role of Media in Communications

Kate Noble BBC World Service Trust Policy Officer

Manoah Esipisu Commonwealth Secretariat Deputy Spokesperson and Deputy Director, Communications and Public Affairs Division

Margie Cook UNDP Afghanistan, electoral programming

Mark Whitehouse IREX Director, Media Development Division

Mark Wilson Panos London Executive Director

Mark Stevens Commonwealth Secretariat Advisor & Head, Democracy Section

Mark Koenig USAID Senior Advisor for Independent Media

Mary Myers Independent Consultant

Nhlanhla Ngwenya Media Institute of Southern Africa National Director

Nicholas Benequista Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Research and Communications Officer, Citizenship DRC

Rafael Roncagliolo International IDEA Project Director, Andean region

Sarah Oates University of Glasgow Media monitoring, political communication

Shally Prasad USAID Elections and Political Processes Division

Shana Kaiser International IDEA Assistant Programme Officer, Electoral Processes

Solomon Mugera BBC Swahili Head of Swahili Service

Stephen King Omidyar Network (ON) Director, Investments

Tim Meisburger The Asia Foundation Regional Director, Elections and Political Processes

Warren Feek The Communication Initiative Network (CI) Director

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ANNEX II. PARTICIPANTS’ EVALUATIONS Content Excellent Good Average Below Average Poor Overall Workshop 62% 38% 0 0 0 Relevance of Themes 84% 16% 0 0 0 Length of Workshop 62% 38% 0 0 0 Quality of Presentations 45% 55% 0 0 0 Format of Workshop 23% 72% 5% 0 0 As this workshop was the first of its kind to bring together the elections and media communities of practice, results gathered from the question ‘Which areas were already familiar to you’ varied substantially. Some respondents noted that areas such as the electoral cycle and the long term assistance approach were familiar to them while others stated their familiarity with the role of media and media support issues in the electoral process. It may be assumed that areas not included in the responses were unfamiliar, further indicating that new information was gathered by virtually every participant. Themes surrounding the most import or useful learning outcome include: • The need for information sharing between the two communities of practice in order to:

Understand the challenges faced by the respective communities Link the work done by the two communities Identify next steps and areas for collaboration/coordination to further support media in

electoral processes • The need for long-term support to electoral processes and to media within these processes • Likely impacts of development, proliferation and use of new and existing technologies • The importance of the use of case studies to introduce comparative practices and realities Networking and interacting with new communities of practice was also listed by many participants as an important feature of the workshop. Lessons learned regarding ways to improve future workshops include the inclusion of more group work and more case studies. In order to respond to some of the identified needs, including continuation of dialogue between practitioners, steps have been taken to include all participants on the ACE Practitioners Network, an online expert network consisting of approximately 200 of the world’s most experienced practitioners. Although the Network was originally designed to centre on knowledge about elections, it is now expanding to include those areas of democracy that do not focus directly on elections but rather on governance as a whole, such as media. Network activities include online discussions with fellow practitioners, posting and answering questions about matters related to democracy as well as sharing democracy-related information such as job openings and events.

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ANNEX III. FURTHER READING AND RELEVANT RESOURCES

ACE Knowledge Network: Media and Elections Topic Area

BBC World Service Trust, The Kenyan 2007 elections and their aftermath: the role of media and communication, 2008

EC Methodological Guide on Electoral Assistance

IMPACS, Media + Elections: An Elections Reporting Handbook, 2004

Lange, Bernd-Peter and Ward David Media and Elections; A Handbook and Comparative Study Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004

National Democratic Institute,Merloe, Pat Media Monitoring to Promote Democratic Elections: an NDI Handbook for Citizen Organisations NDI, 2002

Norris, Pippa, A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies Cambridge University Press, 2000

Norris, Pippa; Curtice John; Sanders, David; Scammell, Margaret; Semetko, Holly On Message: Communicating the Campaign Sage 1999

Oates, Sarah From Political ‘Surf’ to Political ‘Turf’?: Developing Website Analysis to Better Understand the Internet as a Political Catalyst APSA paper 2008

Voltmer, Katrin, Mass Media and Political Communication in New Democracies, Routledge 2006

Useful links

ACE Electoral Knowledge Network

African Union

Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL)

The BBC World Service Trust

The Carter Center

Center for Electoral Promotion and Assistance (CAPEL)

Commonwealth Secretariat

Council of Europe European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission)

Council of Europe – Parliamentary Assembly

Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA)

Electoral Reform International Services (ERIS)

European Commission

European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO)

European Parliament Election Observation Service

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IFES

International IDEA

Inter-Parliamentary Union

International Republican Institute (IRI)

National Democratic Institute (NDI)

Organization of American States (OAS)

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Office of Democratic Institutions and Human

Rights (OSCE/ODIHR)

Pacific Islands, Australia & New Zealand Electoral Administrators’ Association (PIANZEA)

Pacific Island Forum

Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF)

United Nations Secretariat

United States Association of Former Members of Congress (USAFMC)